


Mirror, Mirror

by Tangerine



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Angst, Body Image, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-12-05
Updated: 1999-12-05
Packaged: 2019-04-04 22:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14030295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tangerine/pseuds/Tangerine
Summary: This takes place sometime between X-Factor #27 and X-Factor #33 (Volume 1).





	Mirror, Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place sometime between X-Factor #27 and X-Factor #33 (Volume 1).

Like a phoenix, he rose from the ashes. Like I am. Like I did. We have so much in common now, but he won’t talk to me, won’t even look at me. I need to apologise, to assuage my guilt, to take this burden from my shoulders. He’ll have nothing to do with me. Any look reeks of blame and detest. Warren Worthington hates me.

“Jean, he blames us both. Don’t worry, you know Warren doesn’t hold grudges,” Bobby told me seriously when he found me staring out across the spectacle of New York at night. “All that matters is he’s alive. He’ll realise that eventually.”

“No, Bobby, he won’t,” I replied sadly, leaning my elbows on the railing of Ship, resting my chin in my hands. I remembered that conversation as I looked at New York, standing in the very spot I had worried. Bobby was out with Scott and Hank, leaving me alone with him. Warren was somewhere in this city, hiding in the dark. Our fallen Angel, so dark and twisted from the visage of gold and white I was used to seeing. 

With a sigh, I stood up and ran my hand through my hair, tired from the weeks of rebuilding and constant work. I had barely seen Scott, it was all passing by in a whir, but just when I thought I had forgot about the world completely, Warren would fly past me, stare at me, hide from me. My best friend, and he wouldn’t talk to me.

I walked indoors, the chill night air penetrating my sweater, and I shut the glass door behind me, taking one last look at the brilliant display of lights before turning away for the night. Ship could be lonely when there was no one here.

So much had happened, I had seen so many things. Apocalypse had destroyed a fair portion of Manhattan, but it could have been so much worse. So many more people could have died, but Warren remembered who he was, remembered everything, and Apocalypse lost his most powerful ally. Why had I hoped so blindly it meant all would be well?

Did I dare to search him out? I wanted to talk to him, to test the waters of our friendship, to see if we were still friends at all. He returned on his own terms when we could have lost him completely. I shuddered to think about it, to think that we would have had to take him down if he had stayed with Apocalypse.

I threw on my coat and zipped in to my chin, running out into the chill night. It would be so much easier to use my telekinesis, to lift myself to where I knew Warren hid, but I wanted a moment of humanness, to pretend I was only that, so I walked to Warren’s apartment deep in the heart of Manhattan.

I stared at the building when I got there. Keys, I had keys. I sifted through my purse until I clutched the cold metal in my fingers, putting them to the front door of the building, climbing the stairs to the floor and thinking one last time if I had the right to be at his trendy loft. I opened the door and locked it behind me, twisting the deadbolt and stringing the chain.

“Warren?”

It was so quiet, so empty, I felt it immediately. I shivered slightly but took off my coat, hanging it by the door, and I stepped forward, looking around me. I could almost feel him watching me.

“Warren?”

“I’m right here,” he said quietly, his darkly hued body clothed in uniform, the bizarre shapes of pink and blue clinging to his body like a second skin. He was standing in the shadows, and I had not seen him. I was so used to the flash of brilliant white wing, the streak of blond hair, the amazing blue eyes. You always knew where he was. “What do you want?”

“To talk with you, Warren. I’m worried.”

“There’s no need for that,” he replied sharply, too quickly, too harshly, and I dared to look at him, to meet his hard expression without losing it, without screaming at him and begging him to go back to the way he was. “I’m fine. Go home, Jean. I’m not here, Jean. I’m gone.”

“No, you aren’t, Warren. Talk to me,” I phrased it as a demand not a question, and he turned from me. I reached out to touch him, but the wings, those devil’s tools, unfurled with a screech, warning me. “I’m no fool, Warren. I won’t be blind for you.”

“I’m not asking you to be blind. I’m asking you to leave me alone, to let me be, to forget about me. I’m not the man you knew. You call me Warren, and I’m not him. Do you understand Jean? That Warren died. That Warren is gone.”

The sting of his words cut deep, but I stared back at him, my eyes taking on their own coldness. “Stop the lying, Warren, stop lying to me and stop lying to yourself. This will only become a tragedy if you let it.”

“It already is, Jean, you saw to that.”

A flash of razor sharp and he was gone down the hall, the wings howling eerily into the darkness. Angry. Vicious. Hateful. But lost and scared and begging for help. My telepathy was gone, but I knew him as a man foremost. He never asked for help, he was too proud for that, but he always needed it.

I followed where he had gone, trying to guess where he’d hid this time. Warren had never been blessed with an imagination, he was predictable and obvious, and I loved him for it. He’d lead me straight to him, coax me slowly until I was able to pinpoint his hideaway.

But did I dare it? I saw the silver feathers scattered along the narrow passageways that wove in and out through the large loft, the scratches on the barren walls, the sticky residues of poison from his blades.

I would follow him to hell.

When we were young and new and hopeful, Warren had loved me. To be loved by a man like that, it was a both a blessing and a curse. He was beautiful but dangerously addictive. He needed to be worshipped, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that. Candy did. I hated her, but she worshipped his ego, made him think he was everything in the world. He was so hard to like. He was my best friend.

I loved Scott. He was a perfect match for me, strong but quiet, shy but a leader, and he loved me with purity and hope. Warren wanted something more from me than Scott did, and only now did I suspect he wanted my very soul. An angel, that I never doubted, but darker than that, tainted somehow with an anger in him against the world that we tried so hard to pretend wasn’t there. Was it any wonder this happened? I couldn’t even think, didn’t want to think, that maybe I should have expected this fall from grace. 

“Warren?” My voice echoed off the walls, and I moved through his loft slowly, careful of where I stepped. I heard something in the distance, a sound muted and dull, but it had to be him. “Warren, please, talk to me!”

Nothing. No words to make me think perhaps he cared for me as much as I cared for im. Stubborn, he was, stubborn to a fault! Always his way, too pompous to think about anybody else, Warren was the centre of the world. It wasn’t his fault we didn’t understand that. 

“Warren, you arrogant jackass, answer me this moment!”

A laugh was the reply I received. “Resorted to calling me names, have you?”

I turned around to see him standing there, his blue lips twisted in a cruel smile. If he wanted to play games then we would play games. “Has Apocalypse brought out every despicable quality in you?”

“Or was I always this way and you just didn’t notice? Tell me, Jean, is that one of the million questions racing through your mind? How long have you spent trying to rationalise my behaviour? When will you realise, Jean, that I am not Warren! I am not him! He was never like this! Damn you!”

Wings raced past my face, and I closed my eyes on instinct, pulling back from the gush of wind. When I looked again, he was gone, but he had betrayed himself. A contradiction, always a contradiction, he made himself so hard to understand, to like, to love. Had he always been this way? Probably. Did I care? No.

“Warren, stop running and speak to me, as a friend, as a teammate. This will destroy you, I’ll wake up one day and realise my best friend has left me, and you are my best friend, Warren. I love you as dearly as I do Scott. Please, Warren, stop this.”

Why was I so angry at him? Every word that left my mouth brought with it hate and spite, and I could feel something dark in me fighting to be free. It was so easy to loose control, I realised, and Warren had lost control.

“Warren?” Still silence. Was he even near? Without my telepathy, I couldn’t tell. “You can call yourself whatever you want, but you are the man I know. Why do I know this? Because if I’m wrong, if you’re not Warren Worthington, then that means you’re dead.” Why wouldn’t he speak to me? I sighed, resigned. “If it’s not Warren, then what do I call you?”

“Archangel.”

“But not Death?”

A momentary pause. “No, not Death.”

“Talk to me, please.” Could he hear the strain in my voice? Could he see the tears in my eyes? Because I _was_ on the verge of crying, of falling apart, of trying to forget that this had ever happened to him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

Another pause, longer than the first. “You knew they would ...”

“No, I didn’t!” It came out as a shriek, and I put my fingers to my mouth, the tears hot on my cheeks. “I would have killed them if I had seen them try it, but they waited until I was gone, and I when I came back it was already too late.”

“They took everything from me,” Warren breathed, the real Warren, not Death, Warren, and I wanted to touch him, to wrap my arms around him and assure him it’d be all right, but I couldn’t see him. “The wings were my everything!”

“You think I didn’t know that? I did! It was the only mystery about you I ever solved. Warren, did you think I was blind and couldn’t see what they meant to you?”

“You called me Warren.”

A shrill of metal, and he was gone again, back into the dark where I couldn’t find him. I sat down on his couch, picking up a shattered picture frame and brushing the broken glass from the photograph. Warren and Candy, happy. Where was she?

The door was within view, and I would grab him telekinetically if he tried the windows, forcing him into confrontation, but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. I sat back on the chesterfield, looking around the empty room.

There was a smashed mirror on the far wall, and I stood up, walking to it. I frowned and walked to the bathroom, touching the light switch but the light didn’t come on. It had also been dashed, the glass all over the floor. The mirror over the sink, where I imagined Warren had spent many hours admiring his face, was a thousand splinters of glass. 

I wandered through the loft, noticing with quiet horror that every mirror was broken, and every picture had been tossed to the ground, forgotten and dismissed. I crouched down to touch my fingers to a picture of us, the X-Men, when we were children. There was another by it, one of Warren looking as dashing and handsome as ever. I smiled sadly and brought it to my heart, holding it tightly as if somehow it meant I could bring him back.

“Beautiful, wasn’t I?” 

“Still are,” I replied quietly. “Always will be.”

“No,” Warren murmured, walking to the window and staring out of it, and his profile looked identical to the man I knew. The broad slop of shoulders, the way he held his head high, the way he crossed his arms over his chest when he was thoughtful, they all betrayed him. “He took that, too.”

I don’t know why I thought he’d let me touch him, but I reached out my hand then pulled back when he caught my wrists with his fingers, holding me tightly. I looked up at him, my face half masked by my hair, and he let go of me, throwing me back.

“Don’t touch me, Jean,” he said silently, his voice broken and deep. “What do I do when he’s taken everything that defined me? I’m not a nice person, Jean, and people don’t like me. I’m selfish, and callous, and arrogant. I don’t know how to be ugly, Jean.”

“You aren’t ugly.”

“Look at me, Jean, open your eyes!” He roared suddenly, grabbing me again and tearing the mask from his head, bearing the scarred, hairless head. “Do you want to see more? My entire body is like this! Scars! Everywhere! I’m ugly!”

I looked at him for a long time before I found the strength to raise my fingers to the sharp bones of his cheek. He didn’t move, and I brought my hand to the side of his head, my fingertips running lightly over the wounds. “Still beautiful, always beautiful, Warren.”

“He took everything from me,” Warren gasped, “and I don’t know if there any of the old me still in this body because this isn’t mine, Jean. This ... blue ... I was never this sad, was I? And everything, every bit of me, is blue. I looked in those mirrors, and I didn’t recognise the face that stared back at me.”

“Is that why you broke them?”

“They lied to me. I’m not this man, Jean. I’m Warren Worthington, beautiful, gorgeous, perfect. The women, they never cared that I was mean or cold, all they wanted was to touch me, to be with me, to love me. Now I can’t look at myself let alone touch this body.”

“You can change that. Let the man inside come out. You don’t need to be the playboy anymore, let people see the real you.”

“That was the real me, Jean. Now I have to find a personality, a soul in the void. There’s nothing in me, Jean, there never was. You could never see that. You always thought there was something more to me. Now, you see, there’s nothing.”

Was he right? I couldn’t even look as him, not without betraying my lack of faith. Warren had as many close friends I could count of my fingers, and almost all of them were counted among the original X-Men. He had never gotten along with the next generations, always unapproachable and daunting. He used his wealth as a shield, his clothing as armour, the beautiful face as a warming of his venom. 

Yet, without it, he was still the same, only the medium had changed.

I got up to leave, unable to pretend to help any longer. Whatever had happened to him, whatever had been done, it was too great for me. I hoped he wasn’t looking at me, I hoped he’d gone back into the shadows, so he could see how defeated I looked. I had never lost such an important fight. 

“Don’t go.”

I stopped, turning slightly to look back into the darkness. Warren stood there, watching me with blue eyes, his breathing slow and steady, aware of what he had said. He hadn’t given up totally then, I couldn’t admit defeat yet. 

“Only if you want me here.”

“I’m so alone.”

“Then talk to me.”

“I’ll try.”

Warren moved passed me, pulling the hood back upon his head, and I followed him, stepping where he stepped to avoid the glass. Where was he leading me? I didn’t ask. I would trust him with my life. 

Warren opened a door and waited for me to enter, and I brushed past him, intentionally letting our bodies touch. He flinched but didn’t twist away, looking away from me, and I put my fingers on his jaw, looking at his face wonderingly. 

“Tell me what happened to you, Warren,” I whispered, but he shook his head, his eyes devoid of life as he pursed his lips together. The tragic hero, the fallen angel, the wounded bird, he was all of them. “Please.”

“You have not seen the face of evil, Jean. I have. Don’t make me think about it,” he said, his voice a million miles away. Abruptly, I pushed my body against him, wrapping my arms around him before he could move and sobbed into his chest. “It’s over now, Jean. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It’s going to destroy you.”

“I’ve already been destroyed.” Warren pulled me away from him, looking much taller than I remember him being. Imposing. He had always been aloof, unless it was sex you wanted and then he seemed to pull you. I had seen him do it to so many girls, that look that brought them to him. He could do so much with a look. “Candy’s gone.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Gone.” He sat by the window and waited for me to sit on the white futon. I sat and placed my hand in my lap, waiting for him to speak. He had asked me to stay. It was his turn now. “Tell me a story.”

I couldn’t hide my surprise. “What?”

“Tell me a story,” he repeated, his voice strangely lacking inflection. He gazed at the sky, his face a mask of stone and his fingers twisted in the fabric of a blanket. It was funny, I had seen that blanket a thousand times, but it wasn’t until then that I realised it held some importance. Security. “Something happy, Jean, make me forget, just for a second.”

I smiled sadly. “My best friend, whom I thought was dead, came back to me. I love him, you know, always have, and when he died, a part of me went with him. He is a beautiful man, body and soul, but he has this wall around him, and people think they know him when they really don’t. My friend is afraid that people won’t like the real him, and I want to tell him that the real him is the part I love, but I don’t know how or if he’ll even believe me. What should I say to him?”

Warren didn’t move for a very long time and when he did it was to put his hand to his face, to stop the tears, but he couldn’t, and I was at his side in an instant, gathering him in my arms and holding him as tightly as I could. 

“What should I say to him, Warren?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered, his body shaking with silent tears as his fingers clutched at my back, begging me to save him from whatever hell he had fall into. We sat there until the sun rose, close enough to be one person, close enough to remember that Warren Worthington was in my arms and Jean Grey loved him with all that she was.


End file.
